Service Personnel Information 1939–1945 Name:Albert Joseph De Cruyenaere Service Number:R-59761 Rank:Warrant Officer 1st Class Height/Weight:6’2.5” 161lbs Colour of Eyes:Hazel Marital Status: Single Religion:Roman Catholic Address:301 Dumoulin Ave Next of Kin (and relationship):Alfred Arthur De Cruyenaere (Father) Date of Enlistment: August 21st, 1940 City and Province of Enlistment:Winnipeg, Manitoba
Essay
Not all soldiers are properly commemorated. Some get movies, books, or maybe a Historica Minute. Just because not all who fought are often remembered does not mean that they are not all heroes. Whether or not their actions are made famous, al soldiers should be considered heroes. This is the story of one such hero.
Albert Joseph De Cruyenaere was born in the year 1922 to father Alfred Arthur De Cruyenaere and mother Marie De Cruyenaere. He and his 6 other brothers and sisters were a Belgian family living in St. Boniface, Winnipeg, Manitoba, at 301 Dumoulin Ave with strong Roman Catholic ideals ("Attestation"). Albert was an immature but kind-hearted boy, this lead him to find himself in the middle of much trouble in his early life, throughout school, and even into his military career. Guy Marsland, a flight commander for Albert’s squadron described him in his diary as, “[A] good pilot but always into mischief... [H]e had a generous nature; he was younger even than his years and he did not understand when he was doing wrong. I am quite sure that out of any worry he may have caused his seniors, he never once knowingly did a mean thing to any other man” (Farquharson 105).
The De Cruyenaere House Still stands in Winnipeg today
Albert applied to St. Paul’s High School for his grade nine year. Once there he took religion grammar, composition, literature, algebra, science, history, Latin, French, and German. Albert showed an aptitude for language courses but, while he excelled in his French, German, and Latin classes, he struggled to keep up with classes such as science and later chemistry. This may have been one of the reasons he left St. Paul’s after freshman year to attend Provencher Collegiate for grades 10-12. Throughout his school years, Albert enjoyed hockey, swimming, and pigeon racing. He showed an interest in transport and was a truck driver before he enlisted in the Air Force out of Winnipeg ("Canada").
Albert’s interview showed he was eager to join the military and especially keen on serving his country, as well it described him as tall, slender, ordinary, and clean with conservative and neat dress. On August 21st, 1940, standing at a lanky 6’2.5”, Albert Joseph De Cruyenaere joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, one of the three environmental commands of the Canadian Forces ("Attestation"). After completing his training, Albert was sent to Britain to join the 136 Squadron of the Royal Air Force nicknamed ‘the Woodpeckers’. The Woodpeckers were a predominant squadron in the part of WWII fought over Asia. 136 Squadron was lead physically by their Squadron Leader A.W.A. Bayne, and emotionally by their motto ‘Nihil Fortius,’ Latin for ‘nothing is stronger’. Their mission was to provide a convoy as well as air defence in India and Burma, (then called Myanmar), a mission Albert joined at the beginning of the war (Farquharson 105). During his time with the Woodpeckers, Albert received new ranks and a new name. Other pilots and officers found ‘De Cruyenaere’ tedious to pronounce and he was often called ‘de crooner’ like the crooner singing style made famous by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.
The Insignia of the Woodpeckers ("List")
Farquharson writes simply, “[T]hey called him Bing and the name stuck” (105). By the time he was flying regularly in India and Burma, he was an AC2 and a WO1. AC2 stood for aircraftman 2nd class also known as AC plonk. This rank, a type of air mechanic, came with the responsibility of repairing, overhauling, and flying planes. WO1 stood for warrant officer 1st class, and was only bestowed upon a specialized officer who knew how to fly a plane or shoot its guns. Bing worked on and flew a Hurricane named Leopold, a fighter aircraft designed by Hawker Aircrafts. Though the Hurricane was later overshadowed by the high performance of the Spitfire, it was one of the most commonly used planes among the Woodpeckers (Farquharson 105).
A fleet of Hawker Hurricanes (Farharquson)
Bing’s first adventure in his plane was on February 28, 1943 when he was shot down near India over the Bay of Bengal. The story goes, as reported by Farquharson, “[Bing] managed a wheels-up landing on a small island near the Arakan coast and was greeted by a band of natives... Bing got the headman to put a guard on his ‘bird’ and then... gave him a bath and a bed ‘with silk pillows and cotton sheets’” (105). Bing woke up the next day and was taken in a rowboat to Akyab (now the Burmese city of Sittewe).
While at his camp with the rest of his squadron, the willful Bing did not like to listen to orders. In fact, he was often denied pay, and reprimanded by his superiors for failure to follow orders, flying to endanger lives, and going AWOL ("Record"). Despite being difficult to oversee, Bing had a positive effect on his superiors and other soldiers, especially his good friend Verne Butler.
Owen Hearn, manager for the Calcutta provisioning firm of Jardine Matheson spoke of both Bing and Verne in his books entitled Bing and Verne. Hearne called Butler the “quiet, appraising half of an unbreakable partnership” while Bing was the quick and impulsive half. With Verne’s thoughtfulness and sincerity, these two polar opposites became frequenters of the Hearn apartment (Farquharson 106). A few days after a fateful March day in 1943, Verne was at Hearn’s apartment on leave when they read the obituary of a warrant officer.
On March 15th, 1943, Bing was with three other Woodpeckers escorting a fleet of Blenheim bombers to an attack at Donbaik on the southern part of the Mayu peninsula. Guy Marsland watched the dogfight develop between his men and a strong flight made up of Japanese Nakajima Ki-43s, “[Fellow Woodpecker] Freddie Pickard and Bing De Cruyenaere did their job very well indeed. A number of Jap aircrafts were found; Bing and Freddie obviously shot them down, but neither returned to fill in combat reports”. In the same entry, Marsland spoke highly of Bing’s character, “Poor Bing died as he had lived, not giving a damn for any other man and certainly not afraid of the whole Jap air force” (Farquharson 105). Bing’s body was so deep in the ground and so badly damaged, they could only be sure it was him based on the serial number on his engine. He was buried not far from the site of the crash and a Royal Air Force padre conducted a graveside memorial service in honour of the Woodpeckers’ ‘little French-Canadian’ in the heart of the Arakan Jungle. He was later moved to the Taukkyan War Cemetary in what is now Burma. For his courage Bing received the 39-45 star, Africa star, Burma star, War Medal, and the Canadian Volunteer service medal (below respectively).
Back home on the day of Bing’s death, the Winnipeg Free Press covered the victory of the West End Orioles over the Moose Jaw Canucks 2-1 in a best of three series to capture the western Canada juvenile hockey championship ("West"). A picture of the team was plastered across the front page. On April fool’s day 1943, Bing’s obituary was featured, along with that of 23 other pilots, in the Globe and Mail. Bing was a kind soul and courageous pilot who will be fondly remembered by his succession of brothers and sisters and their families.
The Front Page of The Free Press March 20th, 1943 ("West End Dumplings")
Age (at death): 21 Force: Royal Air Force Unit: No. 136 Royal Air Force Squadron Service Number: R59761 Honours and Awards: 39-45 Star,Africa star, Burma star, War Medal, and the Canadian Volunteer service medal Photograph: See above Next of Kin (and relationship): Alfred Arthur De Cruyenaere (Father) Date of Death: February 11, 1944 Country of Burial: Burma Cemetery: Taukkyan Military Cemetery Grave Reference: 5.G.14. Location: Burma
Book of Remembrance: Page 152 of the Second World War Book of Remembrance
Name of Service Person: Albert Joseph De Cruyenaere Name of Cemetery: Taukkyan War Cemetery Grave Reference: 5.G.14.
Canada. Royal Canadian Air Force. R.C.A.F. Special Reserve Interview Report. N.p.: n.p., 1940. Print.
- - -. - - -. Record of Service Airmen. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
- - -. - - -. Royal Canadian Air Force Attestation Paper. Winnipeg: n.p., 1940. All of the military records were really helpful on giving insight into his life before and during his military life.
"Casualty Details." Commonwealth War Graves Commission. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/2085171/ DE%20CRUYENAERE,%20ALBERT%20JOSEPH>. Provided information regarding rank, date of death, and grave location. Easy search, quick, and to the point. Dawson, Gerald Obenauf ... to ... Des Brisay, Gordon Montgomery. N.d. The Books of Rememberance. Veterans Affairs Canada. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/books/bww2/page1943>. Great to have online. Easier than the actual book.
Farquharson, Robert. For your tomorrow: Canadians and the Burma Campaign,1941-1945. N.p.: Trafford Publishing, 2004. Google Book Search. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://books.google.ca/ books?id=cWmFxTwuaPMC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=albert+joseph+decruyenaere+squadron&s ource=bl&ots=FxKwPbJ1Af&sig=mBmcs3P1H1sVz0mjbIg2BwhaChQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y4-dT8OHGsj gtgeajOGmBA&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=de%20cruyenaere&f=false>. This book was incredibly helpful in digging deeper into the military life of my soldier. The stories provided by his brother really gave insight into his personality, as well as it included the only picture I could find of Bing. It had lots of information on otherwise little known soldiers and I would recommend it to anyone doing this project.
"West End Dumplings." Blogspot. N.p., 14 Mar. 2012. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://westenddumplings.blogspot.ca/2012/03/
history-of-orioles-community-centre_16.html>. A blog I found detailling the history of this hockey team.
Warrant Officer 1st Class, 138 RAF Squadron
Table of Contents
Service Personnel Information
1939–1945
Name:Albert Joseph De Cruyenaere
Service Number:R-59761
Rank:Warrant Officer 1st Class
Height/Weight:6’2.5” 161lbs
Colour of Eyes:Hazel
Marital Status: Single
Religion:Roman Catholic
Address:301 Dumoulin Ave
Next of Kin (and relationship):Alfred Arthur De Cruyenaere (Father)
Date of Enlistment: August 21st, 1940
City and Province of Enlistment:Winnipeg, Manitoba
Essay
Not all soldiers are properly commemorated. Some get movies, books, or maybe a Historica Minute. Just because not all who fought are often remembered does not mean that they are not all heroes. Whether or not their actions are made famous, al soldiers should be considered heroes. This is the story of one such hero.Albert Joseph De Cruyenaere was born in the year 1922 to father Alfred Arthur De Cruyenaere and mother Marie De Cruyenaere. He and his 6 other brothers and sisters were a Belgian family living in St. Boniface, Winnipeg, Manitoba, at 301 Dumoulin Ave with strong Roman Catholic ideals ("Attestation"). Albert was an immature but kind-hearted boy, this lead him to find himself in the middle of much trouble in his early life, throughout school, and even into his military career. Guy Marsland, a flight commander for Albert’s squadron described him in his diary as, “[A] good pilot but always into mischief... [H]e had a generous nature; he was younger even than his years and he did not understand when he was doing wrong. I am quite sure that out of any worry he may have caused his seniors, he never once knowingly did a mean thing to any other man” (Farquharson 105).
Albert applied to St. Paul’s High School for his grade nine year. Once there he took religion grammar, composition, literature, algebra, science, history, Latin, French, and German. Albert showed an aptitude for language courses but, while he excelled in his French, German, and Latin classes, he struggled to keep up with classes such as science and later chemistry. This may have been one of the reasons he left St. Paul’s after freshman year to attend Provencher Collegiate for grades 10-12. Throughout his school years, Albert enjoyed hockey, swimming, and pigeon racing. He showed an interest in transport and was a truck driver before he enlisted in the Air Force out of Winnipeg ("Canada").
Albert’s interview showed he was eager to join the military and especially keen on serving his country, as well it described him as tall, slender, ordinary, and clean with conservative and neat dress. On August 21st, 1940, standing at a lanky 6’2.5”, Albert Joseph De Cruyenaere joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, one of the three environmental commands of the Canadian Forces ("Attestation"). After completing his training, Albert was sent to Britain to join the 136 Squadron of the Royal Air Force nicknamed ‘the Woodpeckers’. The Woodpeckers were a predominant squadron in the part of WWII fought over Asia. 136 Squadron was lead physically by their Squadron Leader A.W.A. Bayne, and emotionally by their motto ‘Nihil Fortius,’ Latin for ‘nothing is stronger’. Their mission was to provide a convoy as well as air defence in India and Burma, (then called Myanmar), a mission Albert joined at the beginning of the war (Farquharson 105).During his time with the Woodpeckers, Albert received new ranks and a new name. Other pilots and officers found ‘De Cruyenaere’ tedious to pronounce and he was often called ‘de crooner’ like the crooner singing style made famous by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.
Bing’s first adventure in his plane was on February 28, 1943 when he was shot down near India over the Bay of Bengal. The story goes, as reported by Farquharson, “[Bing] managed a wheels-up landing on a small island near the Arakan coast and was greeted by a band of natives... Bing got the headman to put a guard on his ‘bird’ and then... gave him a bath and a bed ‘with silk pillows and cotton sheets’” (105). Bing woke up the next day and was taken in a rowboat to Akyab (now the Burmese city of Sittewe).
While at his camp with the rest of his squadron, the willful Bing did not like to listen to orders. In fact, he was often denied pay, and reprimanded by his superiors for failure to follow orders, flying to endanger lives, and going AWOL ("Record"). Despite being difficult to oversee, Bing had a positive effect on his superiors and other soldiers, especially his good friend Verne Butler.
Owen Hearn, manager for the Calcutta provisioning firm of Jardine Matheson spoke of both Bing and Verne in his books entitled Bing and Verne. Hearne called Butler the “quiet, appraising half of an unbreakable partnership” while Bing was the quick and impulsive half. With Verne’s thoughtfulness and sincerity, these two polar opposites became frequenters of the Hearn apartment (Farquharson 106). A few days after a fateful March day in 1943, Verne was at Hearn’s apartment on leave when they read the obituary of a warrant officer.On March 15th, 1943, Bing was with three other Woodpeckers escorting a fleet of Blenheim bombers to an attack at Donbaik on the southern part of the Mayu peninsula. Guy Marsland watched the dogfight develop between his men and a strong flight made up of Japanese Nakajima Ki-43s, “[Fellow Woodpecker] Freddie Pickard and Bing De Cruyenaere did their job very well indeed. A number of Jap aircrafts were found; Bing and Freddie obviously shot them down, but neither returned to fill in combat reports”. In the same entry, Marsland spoke highly of Bing’s character, “Poor Bing died as he had lived, not giving a damn for any other man and certainly not afraid of the whole Jap air force” (Farquharson 105). Bing’s body was so deep in the ground and so badly damaged, they could only be sure it was him based on the serial number on his engine. He was buried not far from the site of the crash and a Royal Air Force padre conducted a graveside memorial service in honour of the Woodpeckers’ ‘little French-Canadian’ in the heart of the Arakan Jungle. He was later moved to the Taukkyan War Cemetary in what is now Burma. For his courage Bing received the 39-45 star, Africa star, Burma star, War Medal, and the Canadian Volunteer service medal (below respectively).
Back home on the day of Bing’s death, the Winnipeg Free Press covered the victory of the West End Orioles over the Moose Jaw Canucks 2-1 in a best of three series to capture the western Canada juvenile hockey championship ("West"). A picture of the team was plastered across the front page. On April fool’s day 1943, Bing’s obituary was featured, along with that of 23 other pilots, in the Globe and Mail. Bing was a kind soul and courageous pilot who will be fondly remembered by his succession of brothers and sisters and their families.Military Service Record
Military Service Record
Force: Royal Air Force
Unit: No. 136 Royal Air Force Squadron
Service Number: R59761
Honours and Awards: 39-45 Star, Africa star, Burma star, War Medal, and the Canadian Volunteer service medal
Photograph: See above
Next of Kin (and relationship): Alfred Arthur De Cruyenaere (Father)
Date of Death: February 11, 1944
Country of Burial: Burma
Cemetery: Taukkyan Military Cemetery
Grave Reference: 5.G.14.
Location: Burma
Name of Service Person:
Albert Joseph De Cruyenaere
Name of Cemetery: Taukkyan War Cemetery
Grave Reference: 5.G.14.
Works Cited
"Air Casualties." Canadian War Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://collections.civilisations.ca/warclip/pages/warclip/ResultsList.php>. Easy comprehensive search. Easy to find the article. For some reason it was difficult to actually view the article and it had to be downloaded.
Canada. Royal Canadian Air Force. R.C.A.F. Special Reserve Interview Report. N.p.: n.p., 1940. Print.
- - -. - - -. Record of Service Airmen. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
- - -. - - -. Royal Canadian Air Force Attestation Paper. Winnipeg: n.p., 1940. All of the military records were really helpful on giving insight into his life before and during his military life.
"Casualty Details." Commonwealth War Graves Commission. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/2085171/ DE%20CRUYENAERE,%20ALBERT%20JOSEPH>. Provided information regarding rank, date of death, and grave location. Easy search, quick, and to the point.
Dawson, Gerald Obenauf ... to ... Des Brisay, Gordon Montgomery. N.d. The Books of Rememberance. Veterans Affairs Canada. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/books/bww2/page1943>. Great to have online. Easier than the actual book.
Farquharson, Robert. For your tomorrow: Canadians and the Burma Campaign, 1941-1945. N.p.: Trafford Publishing, 2004. Google Book Search. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://books.google.ca/ books?id=cWmFxTwuaPMC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=albert+joseph+decruyenaere+squadron&s ource=bl&ots=FxKwPbJ1Af&sig=mBmcs3P1H1sVz0mjbIg2BwhaChQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y4-dT8OHGsj gtgeajOGmBA&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=de%20cruyenaere&f=false>. This book was incredibly helpful in digging deeper into the military life of my soldier. The stories provided by his brother really gave insight into his personality, as well as it included the only picture I could find of Bing. It had lots of information on otherwise little known soldiers and I would recommend it to anyone doing this project.
"List of military decorations." Wikipedia. Wikimedia, n.d. Web. 15 May 2012.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_decorations>. A wikipedia article I used to find pictures.
"West End Dumplings." Blogspot. N.p., 14 Mar. 2012. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://westenddumplings.blogspot.ca/2012/03/
history-of-orioles-community-centre_16.html>. A blog I found detailling the history of this hockey team.
Internet Sites
example from LAC